


Go and Catch a Falling Star

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types, JONES Diana Wynne - Works
Genre: Contracts, Gen, Pre-Series, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: Howl goes out to the Porthaven Marshes to see a star shower.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr in response to @jones-wannabe's drawing here: 
> 
> http://jones-wannabe.tumblr.com/post/154607612571/sudden-idea-of-howl-diving-and-sliding-to-catch

Stars were falling. 

It was different in Ingary than in Wales. Howl discovered that very quickly. He’d seen star showers before, stayed out all night before an exam once to watch the sky. Pinpricks of light had shot through the night, beautiful and tragically distant all at once, and Howl thought of how very very vast the world was, and how very very little this one exam had to truly matter. 

The stars in Ingary were just as beautiful and just as tragic, but they were nowhere near so distant.

Porthaven was barely a glow on the horizon and Howl’s good shoes squished awfully in the marsh, but even vanity over his footwear couldn’t tear him away from the stars. They streaked down from the sky, coming closer and closer and singing or maybe screaming as they fell. The air was charged with magic, and in the midst of that, Howl, the proud owner of a brand new practice in town, felt very much as though he could do anything. 

He had only been planning to watch. “Shooting stars are some of the most magical things a wizard may ever encounter,” Ms. Pentstemmon had told him once. “But it is to be hoped that he will not encounter them.” She had given him a very severe glare, then, and proceeded to tell him that the magic of the stars was very different from that of the Earth, very unpredictable, and very, very dangerous.

The problem was, ‘unpredictable’ and ‘dangerous’ were the sort of words that would attract Howl, and he would dance around them like a moth around a fire until, inevitably, he got burned and had to run for his life. 

And so here he was. 

The first star came down to Howl’s left, about half a mile away. The closer it got to the ground, the more the singing sounded like screaming, and seconds before it hit the ground Howl could swear he could hear sobbing. Even as the star hit the ground, exploding like a sparkler, Howl was running towards it, heart pounding in his chest. 

The stars weren’t just falling. They were dying. And even though Howl felt as though he had known this, that someone had told him and he had understood on an impersonal, factual level, he could not just stand by and watch it happen. He skidded across the mud, but got to the spot much too late to be of any use. The grass was burned in a wide circle where the star had landed. It smelled like a spell gone wrong, like burned biscuits and rotting flowers. 

Howl pressed his hand to the ground. His chest ached. He blinked and found that his eyes were filled with tears. 

And then he looked up and realized that while he’d been running and mourning more stars had been falling in much the same manner. There was a burst of light some distance ahead of him, and traces of a smoldering star off to his right. And they continued to fall. 

Howl stood up. A tiny notion in the back of his mind suggested vaguely that perhaps he ought to go home, but he ignored it. He ran his hand through his blonde hair and looked at the sky. The singing, screaming, wailing, increased in pitch. Perhaps, he thought wildly, perhaps there was something he could do. 

Stars dropped all over the marshes. Most of them were well out of his reach, a mile or two miles in the distance. But there was one that caught his eye, weaving more erratically than the others and coming closer. It glowed with a blue light, and Howl felt, just for a moment, that it had seen him. 

His heart leapt sharply in his chest, and he locked his gaze on that particular star. His feet moved to follow it. He was well-trained in the art of catching things from years of rugby, and although no one in Ingary played, his reflexes were still strong. 

The star screamed, and Howl could feel its fear like an almost palpable quality in the air. Or maybe it was his own fear. He followed the star, tracked it, and then the star swooped suddenly left. Howl sprinted after it. This did feel a lot like rugby, the running. The adrenaline. 

The star reached a point about level with Howl’s head. It was still too far away to grab, but Howl was not going to let this one die.

He leapt for it. With his whole body. With everything.

The star landed in his hands.

Howl marveled. And then he hit the ground. 

Normally he was better at landing. Normally he was more concerned about his clothes and the mud and his face- oh no his face. 

But his hands were full of light and it was all he could do to keep them aloft as the rest of his body slammed and slid through the marsh. Dirt filled his mouth and clumped in his hair. The fall knocked the air out of him, and he just lay there for a while. 

The star had stopped screaming. 

It was warm in his hands, just barely uncomfortable, but Howl didn’t let it go. It flickered against his palm with what felt like pure life. 

“I’m alive,” the star said. “I’m alive!” It’s voice spit and popped and sang, and several things occurred to Howl all at once. 

The first was that he had no idea what one did with a star once he’d caught it. 

The second was that he was facedown in the ground, looking distinctly undignified and putting on a very poor first impression. 

The third was that he’d been wrong about the first thing. He  _did_ know what one did with a fallen star. He also knew it was generally considered to be a bad idea, but it was a bit late to worry about that. 

He removed his face from the dirt– painfully aware of how much a mess it must be, what with the tears and the mud and everything– and carefully propped himself up on his elbows. The star was now nestled in his cupped palms, a ball of flickering blue light mere inches from his face that radiated magic. Ancient magic, barely comprehensible, but obviously extremely  _powerful._

“Hello,” Howl said. His voice trembled more than he would have liked. 

“I’m alive!” the star said one last time, and then turned an eye-like flame in his direction. “You saved me.” 

“Yes,” Howl said, and then added, all in a rush, “I felt sorry for you.” 

“Did you really?” the star asked. It flickered in a way that looked vaguely cunning. "I won’t last long like this, you know. How awful it is to have a moment to rest and truly think about it!” The cunning look began to fade into one of fear, and the flickering grew brighter.

“I suspected as much,” said Howl. He was beginning to regret having told the star he felt sorry for it. He suspected he was going to be manipulated. But it was too late now. “You need something to tether you here, don’t you?”

“Something good,” the star said. “Something strong.” The blue flames danced. “You’re the only thing that will do. And your magic is strong. I can taste it.”

The star could taste Howl’s magic? That seemed impossible when Howl’s body was filled with sparks of power like he’d never felt before coming from the star. “Well you can’t have all of me,” Howl answered. “I don’t care if I just saved you or not.”

“I could take your eyes,” the star suggested. 

“Absolutely not.” Howl was very proud of his eyes. Besides, what use could a star have for eyes?

“Your lungs,” the star said, and Howl frowned. He was beginning to feel as though he was being sold something. The star didn’t care for lungs or eyes, it was merely leading up to what it really wanted. It seemed a foolish thing to do, however, as the star’s light was shrinking rapidly. 

“My heart,” Howl countered. “That would suit you the best, wouldn’t it?” It was a strange thing, to be bargaining away your own heart, but that was what one did with demons. Howl knew this quite certainly, and all of a sudden. 

 It wasn’t as though his heart had done him much good so far. The heart in question (which was remarkably good at getting him into trouble and then falling out of love at the worst possible moment), thumped in his chest as though it wanted to be free. He could certainly live without it. 

The star, fading though it was, flared a little brighter. “Oh, yes,” it said. 

“Fine then,” Howl said. “But if you get my heart, I get your power. You have magic, I know it, and you’re going to let me use it.” 

"Easy,” the star said. “I agree.” 

Cradling the star gently, Howl sat up. “All right,” he said. “Take it.”

The star did. And, just like all those moments when Howl found himself out of love very suddenly, it occurred to him too late that this was an extremely bad idea.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :D
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores


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